Local veterans discover it’s a small world

Tom King and Richard Williams didn’t grow up near each other. King is a native of Connecticut, while Williams hails from southern Louisiana.

Both now live in Carroll County, although this isn’t the first time their paths have intersected, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

More than 50 years ago, both King and Williams were stationed at Camp Eagle in South Vietnam. They discovered the connection after King’s wife, Jan, presented Williams with a quilt from Quilts of Valor of the Ozarks in March.

“After that we started talking and it turned out that not only are we here at the same time, we were in Vietnam at the same time, on the same base and on the same day when half the damn North Vietnamese Army came down the hill. It lasted almost 24 hours.”

The attack occurred on May 21, 1968. A battalion-sized force of North Vietnamese Army soldiers specifically targeted a section of the camp occupied by the 101st Airborne Division’s command post. The area was hit by more than 400 enemy rockets and mortar rounds. The attack was eventually turned back by the 2nd Battalion, 502nd Infantry and helicopter gunships from the 101st Aviation Group. More than a dozen U.S. soldiers and more than 50 North Vietnamese soldiers were killed.”

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King served more than 11 years in the military over the course of four decades. He served in Vietnam and served stateside during the first Gulf War.

“I was in the regular army from ’65 to ’69,” King said. “I went in, I think it was the Thursday after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was Feb. 9 (1964).”

After spending a year and a half in Vietnam and two years in Germany, King was going to re-enlist but the Army wanted to send him to Korea.

“I wanted nothing to do with it,” he said.

Instead of going to Korea, King returned home to Connecticut. A couple of years later, he joined the National Guard and served for two years.

King moved to Carroll County in 1984 and joined a local National Guard unit in 1987. In late 1989, he was called up to serve stateside during the first Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm.

King said Veterans Day brings him mixed emotions.

“For a lot of years, it didn’t mean much, after Vietnam,” he said. “And then, all of a sudden, every returning soldier from Desert Storm was a hero.”

King said he was taken aback by people thanking him for his service after  the Gulf War.

“At first, I just felt like: ‘You’re only about 10 years too late.’ But it’s grown on me and I kind of appreciate it now. There’s times, I find, when Veterans Day is kind of hard. It depends on what I’m doing. And other times I think it’s great.”

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Williams was draft-exempt, after being involved in a car accident while he was in school.

“I had to fight to get in the Army,” he said. “I had to prove ’em this, prove ’em that there, and I enlisted with the infantry. I went through basic training. I didn’t even know about airborne. I went to airborne AIT (advanced individual training) and I said: ‘Hell, I went through all this hell here, I might as well go three more weeks and I’d get paid an extra $55 a month.’ Pay back then was $92 a month, by the way. That’s over a 50 percent pay raise, just going three more weeks.”

Williams’ superiors then asked if he’d like to go through officer candidate school, and he agreed to do so.

“Two weeks before I was supposed to go to OCS, because they were running a shortage of combat NCOs ( non- commissioned officers) in Vietnam, my orders were changed. It went from volunteering to be in OCS, to: ‘You’re being ordered to go to NCOCS,’ which is non-commissioned officer candidate school. Same barracks, same classes, same instructors, same number of hours, except for doing it in six months, you’re going to do it in three and a half. And instead of coming out a second lieutenant, you’re going to come out a buck sergeant.”

In Vietnam, Williams was assigned to the 101st Airborne.

“I was put in charge of scout vehicles for an armored unit,” he said. “We brought in Jeeps with machine guns on them. I commanded a squad of those, four of them. Sometimes I was the platoon sergeant, platoon leader because everybody else got shot.”

Williams, in fact, was shot twice in Vietnam. After being hospitalized and undergoing rehabilitation in Japan, Williams volunteered to return to Vietnam.

“I was determined to be nuts, but the psychiatrist told me he just couldn’t prove it. ‘So I want to go back. Fine. Here’s your paper, sergeant.’ ” After his service, Williams built a successful wholesale food company in Louisiana. After selling his interest in the company, he traveled to Missouri to look into purchasing another business. That deal ultimately didn’t happen, but Williams had found his new home.

“I fell in love with the country up here,” he said. “I spent the day before Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving Day of ’84 up here. Between then and July of the next year, I made 13 trips up here.”

Eventually, Williams and his wife, Carolyn, purchased more than 150 acres in Carroll County and moved here in 1999.

Williams said many people don’t distinguish between Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

“I correct people a lot of times,” he said. “Memorial Day, that’s for the soldiers that died. Period. I’ve got people who will call me on Memorial Day to thank me. I say: ‘No. I appreciate it, but this is for the guys who died. Respect those people, their families.’ I say: ‘I appreciate it, but I did not die.’ I came close a few times, but I didn’t. Veterans Day, to me, is a day that you respect and honor the guys and women who went and fought, the ones that are still alive.”